Linux Blog

It happened, I finally got around to writing a post. Ever since the demise of Google Reader it has been sort of a downward spiral for this blog, my last post almost a year ago. From being number 1 in the search engines for “Linux Blog” to somewhere down on page who knows where and what desperate folks click those links?

I’ve not lost interest in Linux (I’ve used it every day since before the conception of this blog), or writing in general, but perhaps I’ve lost interest or have a lack of time for writing about Linux. There isn’t much to write about that hasn’t already been covered or can’t be for lack of a better term (and because no one uses Bing) “Googled.” I’d ask, what do people want to read about, but I could probably google that, or write about what I think people want to hear about, but that would just be regurgitating content for the sake of it.

This blogs not dead, I’m just going to shift topics a bit and write about what interests me about Linux and tech in general, projects I’m working on or problems encountered and see where that takes it. If I take it back to the beginning and make it fun again perhaps I’ll write more.

I’m not really a huge consumer of hardware, but I today I got a Mac, more specifically a MacBook Air. It is my first brand new computer since I built my desktop which I probably never wrote about. I didn’t pay for it, as it was promotional item from training I signed up for. I had a choice of a Toshiba Ultrabook that never really closes, or the MacBook Air. After I thought about it, the choice was not too hard, I choose the one that would have the higher re-sale value, the better of the two OS’s, and probably better Linux support.

So far I’m impressed, it is a very elegant design, the internal hardware is meh but it does have a SSD which is the first I’ve owned. It would be nice to try and hook up an external monitor, but I’m not sinking any money into it, because I don’t really want to pay the standard $79 apple accessory fee, and am not sure if the thunderbolt port even converts to HDMI, and I’m sure as hell not going to buy a thunderbolt display. There is only two USB ports, which is rather pathetic, even my Netbook manages to squeeze 3, a VGA port and a media card reader in. As far as OSX, I’m not so happy with, it has a few nuances that will take some getting used to, such as the command key which changes the way I use the keyboard (command+t, command+w, etc.) There is probably a fix for that and I’ve already changed some settings to make it more familiar.

My DNS-323 NAS had to have some changes to the Samba config using funplug as it doesn’t connect with SECURITY=SHARE, it has to be SECURITY=USER, not sure why that is. I’m happy to report that my SDR experiments were just as hard with OSX as they were with Linux, I blame that to not really knowing much about radio theory. Other than that, installing XCode, Macports and writing this post I haven’t really had much time to play with it. I’ll stick out using OSX until the training is over, then I’ll look at another OS. Until then, it’ll be VM’s and SSH connections into the desktop PC, which while aging still has more horse power than the Air.

Since I haven’t posted in a while I figured I would, and hopefully start a new trend of writing again. I started a new job last year and had my wife gave birth to our first born in November 2012, since then my time has been somewhat limited, balancing work, life and play. If you take a look at the archives, it is not the first time I’ve taken a multiple break from this Blog.

Well, it’s almost July and you know what that means right? Yep, Google will be shutting down Reader. Their decision never made sense to me since my Feedburner, another Google product statistics show that 90% of my subscriptions are through the Reader service, there are alternatives.

While most people have migrated to other services, those that haven’t should consider doing so, or at least export their feeds to subscribe at a later time.

There are great desktop applications available for most platforms, but I wanted an online reader to sync feeds across multiple machines and read from different locations without having to mark content as read multiple times. The most viable online alternatives to me were Feedly, and TheOldReader.com. The Old Reader won in the end after adding standalone authentication. The interface is familiar as it is pretty much a clone of Google Reader, even the same keyboard shortcuts work.

I hope that when you do find the new feed reader of your choice, you continue to subscribe to TheLinuxBlog, and although it may have been stagnant for a while, I have not abandoned it.

Ok, I’ll admit it; I’m a digital hoarder. I’ve had this problem for a while where I can’t seem to delete stuff. Perhaps its files I’ve created, stuff I’ve downloaded, backups, or backups of backups but files seem to accumulate faster than I can keep up with organizing them. Throw this on top of system re-installs and, being the family geek backups of family members and freelance work to be honest, I’m a bit overwhelmed!

Well, it stops today! At least the start of organization that is. I’ve written in the past about spring cleaning tools, recursive md5sum scripts and tools like md5deep but nothing really came of it. It’s time to take action and get stuff organized. Now I’ve admitted it publicly, I’m sort of obligated to get in control of my digital life and so the voyage begins.

Stay tuned for more posts on digital organization techniques and tools!

It’s been a while since I’ve done some feature improvements on TheLinuxBlog and quite frankly it’s about time for some updating and modernization. Here are some changes I’ve made and some features I’m planning on adding.(Read on …)

Happy new year! I guess it’s time for a yearly update, I feel like everyone else has done it and now its my turn. Hit the jump for some more statistics that are probably only interesting to yours truly.

Top 10 PostsInterestingly enough none of these were written this year. Perhaps I should write a query to extract the most popular ones of this year, I’m not sure they’re getting the same search love as my older stuff.

Over the years my office or workspace has had a lot of variations. From bedroom and dining room workspaces to hole in the wall space at an office, I now have my own home office and I recently got an office make over and have to say so far I’m liking it. I always have liked things to be neat and have there own place but sometimes, things get out of control I’m hoping that this time I can keep it tidy. I think the biggest challenge will be not having enough desk space, I guess having two laptops on it wont help either, I think its time to downgrade one to a netbook!

So, for the first time ever here’s a sneak peak into what my workspaces have looked like in the past and what my workspace currently looks like, starting from the oldest. Keep in mind, a lot of these photos were taken in the process of moving or organizing with the exception of the newest, which were taken recently and in their natural state. (Read on …)

I’ve been trying to keep up this blog for a number of years now. Problem is, I think I over committed when I created the Shell Script Sundays column. I’ve been keeping it going as best as possible, and will continue to do so, but I’m not going to be able to do it every week. If you may have noticed, I haven’t done any on a regular basis anyway. I do however, have some queued up for every other week, but I don’t know how long I’ll be able to continue doing that. There is also, only so much you can write about shell scripts. If anyone wants to step up and write some shell scripting articles you’re more than welcome to do so.

This will be my 70th article written since I’ve started. I doubt any one will even notice anyway, if you’d like to see it make a comeback, let me know.

As the new year has turned, I thought it would be a good time to go back and look at my goals for 2009. To be honest they were pretty modest and I’d pretty much forgotten what they were, despite this fact I still managed to get 4 out of the 6 done. Getting certified never happened, but I feel like I became more qualified, which is all that matters right? Hah. I blame the CD ripping on streaming media services like Pandora, Grooveshark and last.fm which pretty much eliminated my need to rip the CD’s. So all in all I guess it was a productive year.

I’m still working on my technical related goals for this coming year, I don’t really know what to put on the list yet, since I’ve found that goals will change as time goes on. For example, I set up my PBX in November of 09 which was about 11 months after I set the goal that I had forgotten about. Maybe I’ll roll the two I did not accomplish in 2009 over, add a the goals of getting more organized and reducing the amount of equipment I have. Yea, those seem reasonable for now.

Not Linux related at all but I thought it was funny. So, yea. Ignore the giant DISMISS_ALERT button, that’s an error caused by me being stupid, but I thought the actual message was pretty funny.

After dialing a “special” number that I strategically obfuscated using gimp and then may have failed to upload the correct one. I get an:

“Error performing request, No Error”.

Although interesting, I now need to find some one without a jail broken phone to see if they get the same message just for the lols. Anyway this sort of stuff can be found all over the place, I just think its funny to find it on such a trendy hipster user oriented device.

I’m not normally one to just flat out bash Microsoft or trash them for their flaws, but sometimes I do enjoy a good Microsoft Joke.

Here are I know off the top of my head:

Q: How many Microsoft Engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None its obviously a hardware problem
—

A helicopter was flying around above Seattle when an electrical malfunction disabled all of the aircraft’s electronic
navigation and communications equipment.
Due to the clouds and haze, the pilot could not determine the helicopter’s position. The pilot saw a tall building,
flew toward it, circled, and held up a handwritten sign that said “WHERE AM I?” in large letters.
People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign, and held it in a building window.
Their sign said “YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER.”
The pilot smiled, waved, looked at his map, determined the course to steer to SEATAC airport, and landed safely. After
they were on the ground, the copilot asked the pilot how he had done it.
“I knew it had to be the Microsoft Building, because they gave me a technically correct but completely useless answer!”

They’re terrible I know… Terribly *FUNNY*. Post your favorite Microsoft Jokes in the comments or tweet them to @LinuxBlog and I’ll include them here.